Another Jacqueline Said
The Letters Dream
I laughed in the dream at this dream because I felt an immediate understanding and it was funny to me.
The setting was very vague. Others were there and I engaged with them, but all of them were outside of the dream cam’s view. Sometimes I was outside on a green hill; other times, I was indoors. The indoors settings varied from being a restaurant, coffee shop, and office.
I was doing two primary things in the dream. One, words would come up, and I was putting them into order. I thought at first that they should be alphabetized, but then I thought that they should be ordered by association. In parallel to this, I was playing a computer game called “Word Whomp”. Seven letters are provided and you make words out of them while the clock is ticking. So I was making words on the computer game and ordering words off to the other side. Then I began taking the words that I was supposed to be ordering and started putting them into the game. The words were accepted, even though they weren’t made of the letters provided. Throughout this, I was talking with people off-stage.
It was at this point in the dream that I paused to wonder about what was going on. My first thought was, why am I organizing words like this? Hasn’t this already been done in items like dictionaries? Then I pondered why the game was letting me put in words that didn’t have the letters.
That’s when I laughed in the dream. I thought it was about the writing process and angst. And though I laughed and knew I was playing the game right and doing things the way they’re not supposed to be done, I kept going and had myself a fun time.
Three words remained in my memory from the dream: lacing, facing, and gracing.
Cliffhanger
I worry, is there too much dialogue? Is the story too obtuse? Is it too, is it too…arg.
I try to follow the muses as they flash their lights and urge me forward into the foggy writing night and a cocoon of dark imagery. Anxiety ripples through my torso. I want to ask the muses if they’re sure that this is the way, but you know that you dare not question the muses.
Peeking to either side to see what else could be there can’t be resisted but the muses have led me into a precarious wasteland. I feel like cliffs abut the path, and the path is growing narrow and precarious. I follow but I struggle with the catch the muses have clamped on me, a catch almost as beautiful as Catch-22‘s catch. My catch (for the characters) is that they need to remember to know what to do but if they remember, they can be tracked and dusted. (Dusted will be explained at another time, but use your imagination.)
Now all those characters are remembering and the protagonist, Anders, is freaking out, because he’s starting to remember, despite efforts not to remember, what happens when you’re dusted, and what this is all about. The others are coming, the trap is closing, and then, ‘lo, here’s a new fucking group running toward him from the opposite direction.
The muses gave no warning about them. In a panic, I wonder, who are they? What’s Anders going to do now? He was trying to ditch Jazmine and Petty because he remembers with growing certainty that remembering in one person is reinforced in another — memories beget memories — and that’s not good for here and now.
Pooh-poohing my worries, the muses wave their dainty fingers, dismissing my concerns. “We’re stopping for today,” they inform me. I picture them nibbling chocolate truffles. “We’ll pick up here tomorrow.”
It feels like, you know, I watched Avengers: Endgame, and here I am, waiting to see what happens. It feels like I’m watching Game of Thrones, waiting to be see the next death, the next twist.
Cliffhangers. Fun to watch, harder to write when the muses are guiding you on an organic writing trip.
Good day of writing like crazy in one sense, cause, hey, progress. We cheer progress. Mystifying day in another sense because of the questions created by this cliffhanger and the writer’s angst that it enjoins.
What happens next? Well, I go home to wait and see.
Michael Seidel, writer 